Sometimes there are not enough superlatives to describe a player. In the week when Johnathan Thurston was handed his third Golden Boot to confirm his status as the world’s best player – and probably one of the greatest of all time – it was fitting that he delivered a masterclass to steer North Queensland towards the title of champions of the world.

With the game in the balance at 4-4 at half-time after an impressive 40 minutes from Leeds which belied the one-way traffic that dominated the majority of the World Club Series, Thurston stepped up to the plate as he has so many times.

Six members of the Cowboys’ back line crossed the Leeds line, including Thurston himself, after the Cowboys captain laid on numerous tries with the skills that earned him his world-best title.

The 32-year-old makes a habit of handing his kicking tee to a lucky fan in the crowd after every conversion and the Cowboys’ staff must have feared they were running out of them in the second period as North Queensland cut loose.

Thurston has now won the World Club Challenge that has eluded him for so long to sit alongside the NRL championships, the State of Origin titles and the 2013 World Cup. If an honour roll is the definition of the man then Thurston is up there with the very best, but it is his all-round game and character which makes him so popular worldwide; not to mention the fact he is one of the most irresistible half-backs with ball in hand.

“It’s a great feeling to win it,” said the North Queensland coach, Paul Green. “In terms of the club and its history it’s a proud moment after winning our first NRL Premiership last year.”

The record books will show a heavy win for the Cowboys to ally with the rest of a dominant World Club Series for the NRL, but for 40 minutes Leeds certainly asked plenty of questions of the Australian champions.

Without seven first-team players and the onus placed on a number of the club’s talented youngsters Leeds fought hard but ultimately fell away, having no answer for Thurston’s and the Cowboys’ second-half magic.

“It was a big moment for us to keep them down to the single try in the first half,” said the Leeds coach, Brian McDermott. “It took a bit of juice out of us though, and we needed a foothold in the second half but we didn’t get it. I thought we were poor in the first 10 minutes of the second half which allowed them to be as good as they were.”

On a wider note an aggregate scoreline of 118-28 for the NRL sides across the three games in this year’s World Club Series – which completed a 3-0 whitewash for the second year in a row – does lend weight to the argument that this concept is stuttering somewhat, but this game was all about North Queensland and all about Thurston.

The first half offered little hint as to what was to come, with Leeds hitting hard and deserving every inch of the 4-4 scoreline they shared at the break.

They fell behind when Thurston’s exquisite pass allowed his half-back partner, Michael Morgan, to go over for the opening try, but Leeds equalised when the prop Adam Cuthbertson teed up his captain, Rob Burrow, to crash over and make it 4 apiece.

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Leeds’ first-half performance was built on composure and completion but they simply could not live with what North Queensland threw at them after the restart.

They were authors of their own downfall initially, after Ash Handley spilling Thurston’s towering kick allowed Kane Linnett to cross unchallenged. Another error, this time from Burrow, set the Cowboys up again, with Kyle Feldt the try-scorer.

Cruelly for Leeds, Thurston had decided to wait until the second half to truly come alive and it was his clever kick that allowed Lachlan Coote to seal the victory on 61 minutes, before Thurston crossed himself three minutes later as the Cowboys began to streak away from a tired-looking Leeds.

There was still time for Justin O’Neill to become the sixth member of North Queensland’s back line to score following more imperious handling from both Thurston and Morgan, before matters turned ugly late on.

A seemingly innocuous coming-together between James Tamou and the Leeds prop Mitch Garbutt produced an full-on brawl. Tamou was sent to the sin bin and Garbutt was shown a red card after a punch to Tamou’s face, before O’Neill scored his second late on to compound Leeds’ misery.